Oh, hey. Another weekend travel post. *Ducks under desk*
My mom likes to joke about how — if I’m not currently on a trip, I’m planning one. She’s not wrong. As soon as I got back from Boston last month, she asked where I was off to next. I told her I’d been thinking about visiting New Orleans for a while, and surprisingly, she said she wanted to go as well.
So, NOLA it was!
My mom has a culinary arts degree, so she was really enthusiastic about trying a lot of the food in New Orleans — specifically (of course) the beignets, since she specializes in pastries.
So, my mom met me in Chicago and the two of us headed out to southern Louisiana for an extended weekend together.
My mom loves traveling, but never really got to do it much given that, yunno, she worked full-time as a factory laborer to put me and my siblings through school. She’s a phenomenal woman who’s given up so much for her kids, and there’s no way the three of us could ever repay her for everything she’s done for us. My dad, too. They’re both the epitome of parental sacrifice.
Anyway. My mom and I got into New Orleans early Wednesday afternoon and spent a few hours perusing the French Quarter before our hotel room opened up. We opted to stay at the French Market Inn, which was charming and full of character. I would definitely recommend it. Our room was small but nice, and the courtyard was beautiful and relaxing.
We grabbed catfish po-boys at a nearby restaurant and then went straight to Café Du Monde for beignets and cafe au laits. (We went to Café Du Monde every single day of our trip and I tried all three versions of the cafe au lait. Go for the frozen, it’s the best IMO.)
My mom loves window shopping, so she had the best time stopping in all the shops she saw. After we checked in to our hotel, we went to Lafayette Square for a free jazz concert and then ended our day with dinner (and Pimm’s Cups!) and Napoleon House.
I’m not really one for guided tours or overly-touristy things, but my mom (who hadn’t been on an actual vacation since my family went to Disney World my sophomore year of high school) is ALL about them. She asked our hotel concierge (S/O Nancy, you’re awesome) for suggestions for EVERYTHING. We ended up spending our Thursday on a plantation tour and a swamp tour.
I really wasn’t sure what to expect from the plantation tour, and it left me with mixed feelings. The tour itself was wonderful. We took a bus out to Oak Alley (it was an hour and a half away) and took a guided tour of the house followed by a self-initiated tour of the grounds. The property itself was beautiful, framed by grand oak trees and covered in lush green grass. But, the tour focused really heavily on the plantation (and therefore, slave) owners. I know photos of the plantation’s slaves of course didn’t exist, and information about them is limited, but it just felt so creepy to stand in the hallways of this massive house and look up at framed photos of slave owners and hear their entire life stories.
The plantation did admittedly do a great job of paying homage to the slaves by including tributes to them in its artifact room, but I still felt really gross. I think I was more disgusted by the idea of slavery being not that distant than anything else, and since I’m in the Midwest, it’s an ugly truth I don’t have to confront that often.
After the plantation tour, we took a swamp tour. I was honestly surprised at how beautiful the swamps were. Our tour guide tossed marshmallows to the alligators (They’re attracted to the white coloring) and knew a lot of facts about the southern Louisiana swamplands.
During a geology class in grad school, I had to read the book Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell, and one of my classmates remarked that the book made her want to visit southern Louisiana before all the swamps flood out and disappear. I remember thinking the same, so I was really glad that — six years after that class — I got to experience some of Tidwell’s writing firsthand.
After our tours, my mom and I got back into the city and grabbed dinner (oysters and étouffée) at Acme before splitting up for the evening. I took an Uber out to Mid-City to meet up with one of my old friends Janie! The two of us met through Invisible Children, when we ended up spontaneously spending a day together in Los Angeles several years ago.
We had drinks at The Bulldog before I went back to her house to hang out and meet her roommate and pups.
My mom and I started our Friday with breakfast at Cafe Beignet before embarking on a cemetery tour! I was really excited to tour the New Orleans cemeteries because they’re such a huge part of the city’s culture and, admittedly, are super unique and fascinating.
New Orleans actually won’t let tourists into the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 without a tour guide or a valid reason — family permit, archaeology permit, etc. — so if you want to see this cemetery, you need to book a tour. We walked with our guide from Decatur to the cemetery, stopping along several points — like Marie Laveau’s property, the voodoo museum, etc. — for history lectures.
Then, we meandered through the cemetery tombs and learned about the completely fascinating way in which death was historically dealt with in New Orleans.
Because the city is pretty even with sea level, the water table is high… which means if you dig a hole in New Orleans, you’re gonna hit water about two feet in. To combat this, New Orleans started building above-ground tombs with river brick and marble. Bodies are placed in tombs for a year to decompose, then the bones are collected, bagged up and pushed to the bottom back of a tomb to clear the space for the next corpse. It’s all very morbid and fascinating.
After our tour, we grabbed lunch at Cafe Amalie, more beignets at Café Du Monde, popped over to Jackson Square so my mom could have her fortune read, walked down Bourbon Street before it got too sloppy and then took a street car to the Garden District.
Honestly, I was pretty underwhelmed with this part of the weekend. The houses I could see were pretty, but so many of them were closed off with fences, gates and greenery that I didn’t get to see a lot of the architecture I was hoping for.
We hopped the same trolley back to the French Quarter for dinner at Chartres House before calling it a night.
Saturday was our last day in New Orleans. We brunched at Willa Jean, grabbed affogatos at Drip, afternoon drinks at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop (the oldest bar in the country, supposedly) and then hid from the unexpected rainstorm — where else — back at Cafe Du Monde. We grabbed our bags from our hotel and cabbed it back to the airport to end our trip.
I was honestly surprised by how much I loved New Orleans, despite the heat and humidity. I know all the stuff I did was super touristy, but it was so fun! I feel like I only really got to see part of the French Quarter, so I’d love to go back and see the rest… and also, the rest of the city. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to do that sooner, rather than later.
Also… the food! There was so much more I wanted to eat in Louisiana than I had the appetite for. I’m so glad I got to stuff my face with chargrilled oysters, crawfish grits, étouffée, catfish po-boys, beignets, chicory and coffee, hurricanes and hush puppies, but there’s so much more food I just could not physically eat. (Although, my cholesterol probably thanks me for that. I need a major detox!)
Until next flight!
